[david c.]

In Pennsylvania, doctors pay their insurance not based on their track record but rather based on the track record of losses for all docs. So, unlike car insurance where to some extent the bad drivers are penalized by higher premiums, all doctors good and bad suffer.

The med mal industry is driven by insurance companies not doctors. It is a proven unmitigated fact that tort reform lends itself to more profitable insurance companies and not to lower premiums.

Causation is a necessary element of any claim such as the one described in the first post. The insurance company that carried that doctor must have come to some type of conclusion that she had a measure of exposure on this matter. They hold back money when claims come in based on their own assessment of the liability exposure. If there was no exposure at all, to the extent that no reasonable minds could differ, the case would not have gone to a jury. It would have fallen down (excuse the pun) at some preliminary but dispositive step like judgment on the pleadings, summary judgment, or non-suit depending on the jurisdiction.

It is somewhat difficult to extrapolate from this one example and one doctor's decision to retire all the way through to the problems with the greedy insurance companies and their massive lobbying capabilities. In short, "it ain't all the lawyers" guys.